The core problem with Steem is the community

Steem has a problem and it is one that we can't really do anything about. The community. Sounds a bit crazy to call the community a problem, but it really is.

The reason it is a problem is that at the moment crypto is about profits, ROI and speed of turnaround. The entire spere is dominated by people looking to get in, get out and buy their Lambo! and very few really care what that means for the industry. It isn't personal.

Steem is different, it is personal. This means that in order for Steem to do well in the long run it takes a great deal of thought, work and a fair amount of emotional investment. As to do well, it needs to connect economic value and transactional utility to every day events and lives. Its strength and value is in the community but it is also its weakness.

For the most part, investors in crypto aren't looking anywhere near long enough for what a community requires to develop, and it is likely that many of the people who invest into crypto never intended to be part of developing a community at all. It was all about stacking and maximizing one's personal wallet. This will change in time, it has to.

It has to because even for those maximizers and stackers, for their coins to really reach the potential they have requires normal people to start using, buy in, get accustomed to purchasing every day items, put their businesses on blockchains, purchase their insurance or pay their school fees through crypto.

In the long run, the larger view can only be reached through the spread of crypto communities it is just that developing them in the short term isn't easy. We can experience that difficulty at Steem as we attempt to find ways to bring together a very diverse group of people onto one chain and satisfy the needs of all.

That is no easy task by anyone's measure and when it consists of a group that has many people who never intended to be part of a community, the task is harder again. Harder, but never impossible. This is what people might not actually recognize in the day to day Steem grinder.

Despite all of the issues, Steem is actually improving and the discussions necessary are taking place both on and off the platform. The problems we are negotiating and trying to solve won't just benefit the Steem community though, it will also be us and those like us who will mainstream the entire industry as we offer ways for ordinary people to not only take part in the usage, but earn in the creation.

Even the banks are unable to do much of that, they are facilitators of the transactions only but without communities willing and able to hook into everyday usage, it all becomes useless. A tokenized world needs to be created but those tokens have to be connected to something tangible eventually and, that is where community comes in.

This is why I find it interesting that people don't buy Steem at the moment as it offers all of the same earning potential of any other coin people speculate on plus the benefits of a community that can be empowered as customers to use that very currency and earn more of it. Although use case is relatively small, it already has both utility and economy and can scale much further when required, while many of the other coins people are 'investing' in are largely vaporwear ideas that are yet to convince the industries they are looking to be included in to use them.

Most investors don't care about use case of course because most of them are going to buy in and sell out well before most of the projects actually have a chance to do anything they were purposed for. It has happened many times before hasn't it?

Bitcoin is going to change the world, I believe in it and even though there are only 21 million in supply, I am going to spend 10,000 of them on pizza and another 5000 on socks

How strongly did people believe they were going to change the world? Well, some people did hold, some people did believe enough that they would risk not having pizza and new socks for a future far ahead where Bitcoin reached to where they believed it would. There is a difference in people when it comes to planning, investing and risking for the future.

Currently, many are still unsure about what is going to happen in the industry and therefore do not want to invest their time, effort and money into a community that might not work. Many are gambling that they are able to play the short games and then buy into it later if needs be perhaps.

This is Steem's challenge to face, this is the community's problem to solve. How can a community convince people who want fast profit to not only hold but add real value to the blockchain through their investment, work and responsibility to a commmunity that goes beyond their wallet.

It is not an easy solution, it is a long term process that might never be finished and that makes the time, effort and ROI very difficult to calculate and when value is tied to community, hard to enumerate accurately.

When we look down the tracks of future history, what are we looking at? Is success of crypto just as a trading token or does it attach to real world events? Is it just to move financial value from one point to another or is it to build networks of trust where unfamiliar people can work together? Is the future of crypto in finance or community?

If value requires usage, the community has to play a vital role and if the economy doesn't tie communities in ways they can grow together, where is the value and utility?

This long term view of individuals and groups tied together all over the world to form communities is what gives me a positive outlook on Steem. Because, a community that works, grows and trusts together is antifragile as challenges are shared experiences solved and this brings connection and broad-based stabilityt to the group as well as ownership and responsibility over its future.

But hey, keep chasing those short gains and supporting the system that you are trying desperately to escape.

Goodnight.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
_{Posted with Steempress}